'Where did she go?'
'Heaven knows. I wasn't going to follow her. She was quite on her own and she just trotted off down the Pantiles. Almost as if she were scared we'd folow her. Octavia thought she was embarrassed about her brother: suicide, scandal and so on. In fact, I got the distinct impression that Octavia rather thought I was de trop for mentioning it, though it was she who brought up the subject of John in the first place, but I think Miss Emmett was fine with al that. It was me knowing you, I'm certain, that caused al the consternation.'
Finaly he stopped, looking expectantly across the table. As Laurence tried to appear indifferent to what he'd just heard, the silence lengthened until Charles couldn't resist adding, 'What do you think?'
Laurence longed to check whether Charles was certain that Mary had said she was staying with a man, but to do so would be to make himself look a fool. He hadn't been concentrating at the crucial point in the rambling story. Wasn't it her mother who was supposed to be needing her care? He felt irritated by Charles's speculations and, above al, he felt angry with himself.
Eventualy, and it must have been obvious to both men that it was an effort, he said lamely, 'Yes, I seem to remember she had friends down there.' Then to move away from a gratuitous lie to one of his oldest friends, he added, 'Did she look wel?'
Charles looked at him closely for a second. 'Wel, as I said, I thought she looked a bit tired.' Of course he'd said that, Laurence thought, and stopped himself from asking any more questions.
Are you al right?' Charles raised an eyebrow. 'Your fish is getting cold.'
Charles's plate was empty but for a couple of game chips, which he transferred so quickly from plate to mouth with his fingers that the action was almost imperceptible. He wiped his hands and moustache with his napkin.
'Do you know, I think you're a bit keen on the mysterious Miss Emmett, Laurence. Who could blame you? She's a handsome girl and since Louise died you've turned yourself into some kind of recluse, so personaly I'm delighted to see an old friend back in play, but, for what it's worth, whatever she was doing last Sunday, it didn't look as if it was making her particularly happy.'
'I don't know,' said Laurence and stopped.
He realised as he spoke that behind the vague reply was a profound truth. The chasm of what he didn't know was huge. Mary was the least of it. Everything he thought he knew when he was eighteen had been meaningless. Everything he had thought his at twenty-one was gone. That was undoubtedly why he was devising hare-brained schemes to chase dead men and why he was so fond of Charles who had seemed old at thirteen and would seem young at eighty.
For want of anything else to say he blurted out, 'I'm actualy going down to the home, asylum, cal it what you wil, where John Emmett was a patient. Next week. Just to see whether there's anything I can find out for ... Mary.'
'Wasn't that somewhere in the Cotswolds? Oxfordshire? Gloucestershire?' Charles asked.
'Fairford. The nursing home is caled Holmwood, it's in Gloucestershire. It's an hour or so west of Oxford by train.'
'Wel,' Charles said, brightening up, 'no need to go by train. We can both go in the car. Good to try her out after her temperamental fit the other day and I haven't got much on during the next week as it so happens. We could leave early, stay a couple of nights somewhere and come back after you've spied out the land.'
Reading the expression in Laurence's face, he added quickly, 'Unless you're taking your Miss Emmett and want to go a deux, of course?'
When Laurence shook his head, Charles continued, 'Wouldn't get in your way. Have a walk. Take the air. Lovely countryside. Who knows, even pick up a bit of gossip?'
To his surprise Laurence found the thought of going with Charles, even traveling in his car, was a pleasant one. Al the same, he needed to explain more about his enquiry.
'I'm afraid I'm not exactly going as myself,' he started. 'I mean, I am going as myself but I'm not going to represent Mary Emmett. We didn't want the Holmwood people to be aware of my specific interest in John's death. I've sort of invented a brother—Robert—whom we might need to place in the care of a nursing home. Bad experiences in Flanders...' He tailed off.
'Wel, you are a dark horse,' said Charles happily. 'Reminds me of Buldog Drummond. Marvelous read.'
Chapter Twelve
The journey started off more like a voyage. It had been raining al night and it continued to pour as they drove out of London at dawn. There were very few other vehicles on the road. Charles swerved vigorously to avoid standing water on some streets, yet water seeped in round the passenger door. The interior of the car smeled of leather and oil, and the windscreen and side windows were soon misty with condensation. But by the time they reached the country roads beyond Slough the clouds broke up, and when they stopped briefly at an old inn at Hurley at midday it was beginning to get slightly warmer as the sun emerged.
Laurence's back ached as he puled himself upright. It had done so since the war. 'You've got an old man's back,' Charles said as he swung himself nimbly out of his seat.
After a pint of beer, they crunched back through rusty drifts of leaves and bright-green spiked conker cases split open on the steaming path. When they returned to the car, Charles puled back the roof and strapped it down, then took out two woolen scarves, goggles and a map, giving Laurence the less disreputable scarf. Charles set his goggles in place and looked every bit the fearless aviator his driving suggested. Once Laurence got used to the noise and the air rushing past, he relaxed. When they stopped the car a couple of times for Charles to look at the map, he could hear birds and smel the earthiness of the damp countryside. They made little attempt at conversation; Charles occasionaly shouted a brief commentary on the car's performance, which was mostly lost to the wind and the engine, and Laurence made vaguely appreciative gestures with which Charles seemed satisfied.
At one point, where the road was straight and wide, he slowed to ask whether Laurence wanted a go, apparently indifferent to the fact that his friend had never driven a car in his life. Having received a firm refusal, Charles lit his pipe and drove on, occasionaly beating off the sparks which dropped on his coat.
They passed through Maidenhead, Henley, Walingford and Wantage: towns of Georgian brick houses and pale stone bridges with broad and tranquil views of the Thames.
Henley was the only place Laurence had visited before, for the 1911 Regatta. It had been one of the hottest weeks of a blazing summer. He'd stayed with an aristocratic Oxford companion: Richard Standish. The house stood a little way from the town, its park slightly raised above the river. The first morning he had got up early. The air was warm even before the sun rose and as it came up a veil of mist lingered over the water. It was silent at the river's edge, the surface dark and unbroken between the reeds. Standish's people had a large house party. He and Richard and a cousin of Richard's, al unexpected guests, had to share a long attic room in the servants' quarters, under the eaves where they could hear doves cooing while they lay on top of the bedclothes in the stifling heat. It was the week Laurence had met Louise.
Louise, then seventeen, was also staying with friends: a large, noisy family with five daughters. He had sometimes wondered whether their meeting and subsequent attraction had al been based on the fantasy that was that regatta week. Louise was being pushed by her mother to set her sights beyond her mercantile roots. He was lonely and without any family. That week he was ensconced with his titled friend while Louise was nestled at the heart of her ebulient hosts. In those contexts they both seemed to offer what the other most wanted. In fact, when he tried to remember when he first saw Louise—surely this was a crucial moment in any tale of love—he was hard put to separate the pale blur of cream and blue dresses, spinning parasols and straw hats, the chattering and the giggles, into separate young women.
John Emmett was there too, he suddenly recaled, though where he was staying he was not sure. He had forgotten that fact completely but now it occurred to him that was actualy the last time he'd seen h
im. Into his mind came a picture of John standing barefoot on a slip in a rowing vest and shorts, slender but wel muscled. It had slipped his mind that John was such a good oarsman. He was not a dedicated one; although he could have been first class, he always maintained a position of ultimate disengagement. Was that just the pose of a very young man, he wondered? But John had rowed for his colege, which must have required some commitment.
Was there a girl beside him? He rather thought there was, smiling and laughing with an easy familiarity under a ridiculous hat. Was that his fiancée, the Bavarian girl? Had she ever come to England?
Just as Laurence was basking, content and almost hypnotised by the vibrations of the car, luled by memories of summer and cool water, a bump in the road and a mutter from Charles startled him and instantly his mood plummeted. Of al of them, excited and noisy, it seemed that only he was left. That June, eating strawberries in the shade of pavilions or watching the dripping boats lifted from the river, such a thing would have seemed impossible. They were al so much there, so permanent in their world. He had occasionaly wondered if it was actualy he who was dead and excluded, while the others continued together, missing him from time to time, but busy somewhere else. Suddenly, surprisingly, his eyes stung and a desperate fear swept over him that he would weep, sitting in the front seat of Charles's car, traveling along autumn roads in England, and that if he did so he would be crying not for the dead but in terrible self-pity that things he'd enjoyed had been taken away.
He lifted his head to the oncoming wind, glad that his smarting eyes were hidden.
They passed a flock of children coming out of a vilage school. Several girls in pinafores waved, while smal boys in short trousers and boots shouted at the sight of the car. Charles hooted twice. Smoke rose from cottage chimneys. A dog ran out at them yapping and in danger of hurling itself under the wheels in its fury.
They came through Wolvescot, right on the border between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire according to their map, and gathered speed going downhil between an avenue of trees. Charles jabbed his finger vigorously out of the side window and, leaning forward, Laurence could see some sort of tal, dark tower emerging from a dense copse on a nearby hil. There was something Gothic about it, isolated in the English countryside.
'The Foly,' Charles shouted. Laurence remembered it from an outing at school; they must be nearer than he thought to the Wiltshire border.
The countryside became more undulating; the sun was almost directly in their faces, yet it was getting colder. Laurence puled up his greatcoat colar around the scarf and sank lower in his seat. Charles had come up with the name of both an inn and a smal hotel, suggested to him by friends.
They finaly roled into Fairford along a narrow street of honey-coloured, terraced houses. They passed the hotel, a tidy Georgian house, just as they came into a large market place and stopped. An inn, the Bul, occupied almost one ful side of the square. Its low, mossy roof and smal windows gave it an appearance of great age.
Charles stood by the car, looking from one establishment to the other. He puled off his goggles; each eye was surrounded by a disc of white in his grimy face.
'Shal we try the inn first?' he asked, to Laurence's surprise. 'Vilage hostelry by the look of it; sort of place one might find oneself buying a drink for a local and picking up a bit of gossip. Hotels only have guests, strangers like us, nothing to be gained there.'
Not for the first time, Laurence looked at him in admiration.
As they walked into the dark, low interior of the inn, the landlord appeared, looking surprised, wiping his hands on his apron. Charles took a large, plain room with double windows overlooking the market square, while Laurence chose a much smaler bedroom with a beamed ceiling and a tiny fireplace, but a view towards the spire of Fairford church. A boy brought in their bags and they agreed to meet in half an hour.
After a while there was a knock on Laurence's door and a plump girl stood with a large jug of steaming water. 'D'you want the fire lighted?' she asked.
Laurence shook his head and took the jug from her. He heard the squeak of floorboards as she went downstairs. He hung his coat in a wardrobe that smeled strongly of camphor, then, stripping off his jacket, shirt and vest, poured the contents of the jug into the bowl on the washstand and leaned forward, steeping his arms halfway to his elbows. His skin tingled with the sudden heat.
Peering into the speckled glass over the basin, he realised that his face was as creased and filthy as Charles's—no wonder the landlord had looked surprised.
He was quite stiff and weary, as if he'd had a day's exercise rather than a ride in a motor car. When he'd washed he lay down on the bed and puled the eiderdown up over him for warmth. The bed sank deeply beneath him, softened by age; it reminded him of school where generations of boys had shaped the mattresses into hammocks. Under the feather pilow was a horsehair bolster.
He lay on his back, looking at a ceiling yelowed with age. With his ankles crossed and his hands on his chest, he was as stil as an alabaster knight. Al he needed was a smal dog under his heels, he thought. He was drifting. The eiderdown became an ancient flag over the catafalque. He remembered a cathedral where his father had taken him as a child. Military colours and standards hung high in a side chapel, flag after flag, generation after generation: stained, torn, repaired and decayed.
The lower ones were stil dyed deep red and blue, and retained threads of tarnished gold; the highest had faded into soft, bone-coloured gauze, the distant regiments and battle honours that they represented as invisible as their mottoes had become. He must have been very smal because his father had been holding his hand.
***
An insistent rapping at the door woke him.
'Laurence. Are you coming down?'
Laurence looked at his watch but had to strike a match to read it. He'd been asleep for nearly two hours. He swung his feet out of bed and puled on his discarded jacket.
'God, Charles, I'm sorry. I must have just dropped off' he said as he opened the door.
'Not a problem. I've been having a little look around, spoken to our landlord: font of wisdom, and he's happy to serve a simple dinner in the parlour. You dress and I'l see you downstairs in a quarter of an hour, say?'
'Yes. Of course. Sorry, just went out like a light,' Laurence said.
When the door closed he lit the lamp then scrabbled to find a clean shirt and socks. He peered in the glass again, damped down his hair and combed it through with his fingers. He hardly recognised the man with the deep lines round his eyes and a few first grey hairs. When had he got so old?
Chapter Thirteen
Downstairs a coal fire burned in a back room which smeled of smoke and tar. Plates of cold tongue, chunks of fresh bread and some cheese had been set out on a table next to a stoneware jar of pickles.
'I hope the beer suits you,' Charles said. 'Local brew but the landlord assures me it's good.'
Laurence was ravenous and the food was much better than he'd expected. There was occasional laughter from elsewhere in the building but muffled by thick wals, and from time to time a heavy door slammed shut. Otherwise the only sound was of their knives scraping on the plates. The beer was as good as Charles promised and when the girl he'd seen earlier came in to take their plates and refil their tankards, he sat back, content.
'Nervous about tomorrow?' Charles asked.
'I expect I should be but in truth I'm quite curious.'
'See what you can extract for Miss Emmett?' Charles looked amused as he puled out his tobacco pouch.
'Actualy, it feels more as if I'm doing it for John himself and, less creditably, my own curiosity. But it's certainly because of Mary's suspicions about how the place was run. Eleanor Bolitho, too—she was pretty damning about these set-ups. Not that I can do a thing about it anyway.'
Charles was concentrating on tamping his pipe.
Laurence went on, 'It sounds terribly worthy, doesn't it? I realy just want to get a look at these people.'
'You need to keep an open mind, that's al,' Charles said, slowly. 'Not because I personaly doubt for a minute that things go on that would make your hair stand on end. In fact, from what I've heard, quite literaly there's electric stuff and so on. Wouldn't be alowed on a chap in Wormwood Scrubs, yet their families empty their coffers for it.' He reached for the pickle jar. 'But what realy bothers me is that you're not a very good actor. Never were. Seriously, old chap. Think you're so British, sang-froid and so on, when realy your face is an open book. When you go in and meet Dr Caligari, you've got to be believing they might help Reginald.'
'Robert.'
'Just testing you.' Charles continued, unperturbed, 'Take the embarrassment of the unhinged Bertie Bartram off your hands. Possibly even make him better.
Return him to the bosom of his relieved family. Or keep him safely out of it. You've got to look as if you hope they can work miracles, not as if you suspect them of negligence at best and atrocities at worst. You've got to forget everything those girls told you. I mean you're dealing with mind doctors. They'l be on to you in a minute.
Wel, half an hour, certainly. Probably charge you two guineas to boot.'
'Thank you,' Laurence said simply.
'Stil,' Charles said after a moment's pause while he sawed an inch-thick slice of bread off the loaf, 'they're not entirely popular in Fairford by al accounts.'
'The landlord?' Laurence guessed.
'Wel, I only had a brief chat. Explained we were down here to find a place for your brother, stricken war hero and al that. Turns out he—our landlord—was at Mons same time as my lot, and lost a nephew in the Glosters. Main gripe seems to be that Master Caligari—what is the man's name?'
The Return of Captain John Emmett Page 10